Late Start
by Lucillia
Summary: After getting a bit of a late start in the Hunting business, Sam and Dean aren't just being pursued by FBI Agent Victor Henricksen. Gibbs and team want to know why one of their own left to go "hunting ghosts" as well.
1. Prologue: Dean's Departure

_Promise me, promise me that on November 2, 1983, you'll stay in bed, no matter what you think you hear. Promise me..._

"Where's the Fire Probie?" Agent Anthony DiNozzo asked a rather pale Junior Agent Dean Winchester who had just hung up his phone and was in the process of running out the door on November 3, 2005.

DiNozzo and Winchester had gotten along quite nicely since Dean had joined the team a year earlier, fresh out of the FLETC after a stint in the Marines, but that didn't stop DiNozzo from calling the other man "Probie" like he did with the other newbie on the team, McGee who had also earned the moniker Elf Lord. DiNozzo differentiated between the two by referring to McGee as "Probie McGeek". Dean was someone DiNozzo considered to be a friend or a little brother, and was someone he frequently hung out with after hours. They had shared similar tastes in t.v. shows, movies, cars, and women.

"Stanford." a rather pale Junior Agent Dean Winchester replied before he raced out the door.

That was the last time DiNozzo saw Dean for a long time, and when he saw the other man again, he was on the other side of an investigation.

"She was on the ceiling Dean." Sam Winchester said to his formerly estranged brother two days later as they stood by the graveside of Jessica Moore.

Behind them, Mary Winchester cried both for the death of her son's fiancee, and the loss of her son Sam's innocence in the matters of the supernatural. She held no illusions that her son would leave this alone. The best she could do for her boy who would no doubt be going after the creature that killed Jess would be to help him along the way as best as she could. Despite the fact that she'd been out of the game for decades, there were things you don't forget. If worst came to worst, she still had a number of cousins who were still hunting. Two that she could list off the top of her head were Gwen and Christian who had once dropped by for a rather tense and awkward Thanksgiving several years back.


	2. A Woman in White, A Wendigo, and a Resig

Dean carefully stepped over the salt line that ran across the doorway of the entrance of his family home in Lawrence Kansas which was identical to the other salt lines that ran across all of the other doors leading to the exterior and windows of the house. As a kid, he'd been told that it was some sort of home remedy to keep insects out, and not to mess with it because he'd end up tracking salt all over the house which neither of his parents wanted to be stuck cleaning up. Dad had hated it since he himself had stepped in the salt any number of times and tracked it everywhere, but put up with it as well as their mom's other quirks until the divorce.

It had only been a week earlier that he'd learned that the salt wasn't to keep bugs out. What the salt kept out was larger, nastier, and frankly unbelievable if you didn't see it for yourself, and sometimes unbelievable when you did see it for yourself. He used to laugh at people who believed in ghosts, but he wasn't laughing anymore.

He probably would have thought his mother was insane if he hadn't gone with his mother and brother to a small town called Jericho that had been a few hours out from Stanford in order to see the surprise she had told him was there. He'd thought that his mom had been trying to distract Sam, but it turned out that she was doing something else entirely. She was showing her boys a small bit of what Sam would be up against if Sam chose to go after his fiancee's killer.

He'd managed to bullshit his way into the investigation that was going on in the town when they'd arrived at his mother's behest after he'd learned that one of the victims of the mysterious serial killer that had been preying on men in the area had formerly been in the Navy. It ended up turning out that the perpetrator was a vengeful spirit called a "Woman in White" who dealt harshly with those who were unfaithful, and that there was a world out there that he'd been unaware of, a world that his mother had tried to leave but had been pulled back into when something burned Sam's girlfriend on the ceiling.

If his mother hadn't waited until him and Sam had seen the Woman in White for themselves before telling her story, and informing Sam that he hadn't been crazy when he'd "thought he'd seen his girlfriend on the ceiling", he probably would have been calling for a psychiatrist. It turned out that his mother had her suspicions as to what it was that had killed Jessica Moore, and it had been the same thing that had killed her own parents back in the Seventies, a demon with yellow eyes that had forced their mother into a deal of some sort in order to save their father. His mother had given him a number of rather odd looks when she told this story for some strange reason.

All the way back home, including the pit-stop made in Colorado to deal with something called a Wendigo which had nearly killed Sam, his mom had told him and Sam who he hadn't spent so much time with in nearly a decade stories about the family business that she had left so she could marry their dad. As it turned out, their dad had unknowingly plugged a pair of ghouls in Windom, Minnesota when he'd been going through the cemetery there because he'd received a letter telling him that a relative was buried there while he was going through his genealogy kick, and had been attacked. Fortunately, dad had been carrying a gun at the time since it was shortly after the shop had been robbed by a couple of punks while he'd been caught flatfooted without a weapon, and he'd resolved not to go through that again. As it had been after the divorce, mom hadn't really been too pissed to learn years later that Dad'd had a child from a one night stand with a nurse at the hospital.

After making his way to his old room which was still pretty much how he'd left it, he logged on to his ancient computer, opened a Word program, and started typing. He wondered what he was doing several times as he typed up a certain letter in the room that looked like it had when he'd graduated except for the fact that someone had gone through and straightened up. His job with NCIS had been meant to be a career that would last a lifetime. He loved his work, he loved his team, and he loved the life he led. He'd worked hard for years to reach this point in life, and he had been on his way up. That would all be gone now.

Despite the fact that he'd been a mama's boy as a kid, he'd grown up to be a great deal like his father. Like his father, he had joined the Marines out of high-school, and rose through the ranks where he was well regarded by his peers and superiors. He had a passion for classic cars much like his father's, and thought that he would become a mechanic like his father, right up until a NCIS agent had gotten him out of a jam that involved him being framed for a crime he hadn't committed, and he'd found a new goal in life. After going through law enforcement traing, he had joined NCIS. He had requested to be placed on the best team, and had been placed under a hard but good man that his father would have liked named Gibbs.

He loved his work, loved putting the bad guys away, and loved his teammates like family. The thing was, despite the fact that aside from a couple of awkward holidays he hadn't seen his brother who had put a continent between them in years, he loved his brother more. He didn't know exactly what his brother was up against, but he wouldn't let it kill Sam like it had killed their grandparents and any number of other "Hunters". Not if he could help it.

He would be there by his brother's side, keeping him alive until they dealt with that thing that had killed Sam's fiancee. Sam was in shape, but not in the shape he needed to be to hunt down the son of a bitch that had killed Jess. From what his mother had been telling them on the trip back home, Sam would need weapons training, and training in self-defense at the very least. The fact that Sam had been nuts about Karate when he was a kid was a plus, despite the fact that it had been years since Sam had last practiced. Hunters tended to travel in pairs and packs for a reason. Until Sam got into the swing of things, he and mom would be there by his side, helping him learn what he needed to.

Several days later, despite the fact that he had a number of misgivings about what he was doing, Dean set his resignation letter down on the Director's desk and closed that chapter in his life. When he walked out the building, he didn't think he'd see it or Gibbs again.

He was wrong.


	3. Wanted

Victor Henricksen couldn't figure the Winchesters out. Up until almost two years ago, Dean Winchester had been a federal agent with the NCIS with a good track record, and his younger brother Sam Winchester had been a model student at Stanford University. One day, they're upstanding citizens with clean records aside from the usual juvenile crap, and the next they were wanted for grave desecration and murder amongst other things. It frankly boggled the mind.

Aside from the possibility of hereditary insanity that suddenly manifested in adulthood with no prior symptoms, it just didn't make any sense, any of it. The murder and the mayhem seemed to come out of nowhere. Or at least it did until he'd dug deeper into their family background and discovered that the Winchesters were an off branch of the Campbells. The Campbells were a widespread clan of criminals who were wanted for just about every crime you could think to name. Mary Winchester had a juvenile record nearly a mile long that spanned nearly the entire continent, Canada and Mexico included, and had been suspected in her parents' deaths until the police had determined that it had been a murder-suicide, and that Samuel Campbell had stabbed himself after killing his wife and attacking Mary and his future son-in-law. That sort of violence had to leave a mark.

Despite the fact that their parents had divorced, Sam and Dean Winchester's home lives had seemed rather ordinary on the surface. Mary had gotten custody of the children after the divorce, but they had had regular visitation with their father John before he'd died of cancer back in '02. Until the divorce, Mary had been a housewife and a member in good standing of the PTA. After the divorce, she had worked at a local bakery, and often volunteered for a number of charities in what little free time she had. Just about everyone who knew her loved her and talked about what a sweet woman she was. Before they left home, the boys had good grades, had been well liked, and had shown no signs of being capable of the sort of violence they were committing whatsoever.

Suddenly, Sam Winchester's girlfriend dies in a fire that may not have been accidental, Dean Winchester resigns from his position in the NCIS, and the three Winchesters go on a family reunion tour that included a cross-country crime spree. At some point several months ago, Mary vanished, and he was beginning to suspect that she had been one of the Winchester brothers' victims.

Up until the incident at the bank a week earlier, he had almost been convinced that Dean Winchester had been dragged into this whole mess as an unwilling accomplice who had been trying and failing to keep his mother and his brother Sam who had somehow faked his death in St. Louis after murdering three women and attempting to murder a fourth under control. At the bank, it became obvious that he was fully participating in his brother's crimes. His fingerprints had been on the knife that had been buried in one of the hostages, and it had been him who had taken down two of the SWAT team who had been sent in to capture them, and stolen their uniforms, enabling their escape. It was possible however that Dean was suffering from some form of Stockholm Syndrome. His family had had years to work him over by this point, a lifetime in fact.

Realizing that he wasn't going to get anywhere by staring at a file all day, Victor decided to drop by the nearby NCIS office that Dean Winchester used to work out of and speak to people who knew him before he had gone as bad as a man could go. Perhaps they would have some insight into his character that wasn't in the file, some clue that would lead him to him and his brother Sam.

Halfway across the country, Lilith was working on kidnapping yet another batch of Azazel's special children in order to test them. Following Azazel's death at the hands of the Winchesters, it had fallen to her to move the plan to free Lucifer forward. Azazel should never have underestimated the power of a mother who felt that her children were threatened, especially not one who had reasons of her own to get revenge. It was a pity that Mary Campbell Winchester had died in the fight with Azazel. She would have loved to have ripped the woman apart for what she had done. Not necessarily because she had been fond of Azazel, but also because she had created more work for her. Dealing with the psychic brats until Lucifer's vessel was found was supposed to be Azazel's job. The entertainment watching them kill each-other off provided didn't even come close to making up for the fact that she was stuck with the thankless task.

So far, the Winchesters had gotten by on luck and the aid of a number of far more experienced hunters who were distantly related to them. It wouldn't be that way for long though. When she was done dealing with these brats, she would see to getting her revenge on the Winchester boys personally. The fact that Sam Winchester was one of Azazel's brats and had been a personal favorite of Azazel notwithstanding.

Back in Washington D.C., Agent Gibbs sighed when he saw agent Henricksen whom he'd had the misfortune of dealing with several years earlier step out of the elevator. Unlike Tobias, Henicksen tended to try to take over any case he got involved with. It was one of the reasons he didn't like dealing with the man. The case he was currently working on couldn't be considered to be potentially in the FBI's jurisdiction, which begged the question of why Agent Henricksen was here.

"Can I help you with something?" Gibbs asked with an undertone that clearly said that Henricksen's presence was unwelcome, when the man had zeroed in on his team and made his way to a spot amidst his team's desks.

"I was wondering if you could tell me something about Dean Winchester." Henricksen said.

Gibbs didn't visibly react despite the fact that Henricksen had hit a sore spot. He hadn't believed Winchester capable of the things he had done until he'd seen the news footage last week, and still a part of him didn't believe, didn't want to believe. He had worked with the man for a little over a year, and hadn't seen any of what he was charged with in him that entire time. In the short time Winchester had been here, he had become family, much like DiNozzo, McGee, Ziva, Abby, and Ducky were. The entire team had been shocked when he and his brother had ended up on the list of people wanted by the FBI for a wide range of crimes from impersonating a federal agent to murder. The man on that list hadn't been the man they knew, and they had found themselves wondering if they had even known him at all.

Seeing him in the news footage from that hostage situation in Milwaukee last week had been quite a blow.


End file.
